


how to talk to girls at parties

by polyamory



Series: 30 days of tw femslash [13]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 30 Days of Femslash, Aliens, Based On A Short Story, F/F, First Meetings, House Party, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 00:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyamory/pseuds/polyamory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kira looked into the room where the music was playing. She didn't recognize the song. Girls were dancing slowly to the music and leaning up against the wall, faces hidden in their cups.<br/>Kira's hands felt empty, hanging at her side and she longed for something to hold onto, so she went further into the house in search of the kitchen.</p><p>inspired by Neil Gaiman's short story "How To Talk To Girls At Parties"</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to talk to girls at parties

**Author's Note:**

> i didn't know how to indicate this but all the kira relationships are equal i.e. have the same screen time  
> this fic is a little different than what i usually write (not alone because it's written in the past tense) and it's based on the short story by neil gaiman. you don't have to have read it to understand anything going on in this fic, though, but it's a good story i recommend it. you can read it [here](http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties_\(Text\))  
> so yeah, this story might be a little weird but i hope you try it anyways because i really like it and i had a lot of fun writing it. lmk what you think!!

"Come on, Kira, it'll be fun," Scott laughed. He was walking backwards down the street so he could look at Kira, urging her on.

"No, it won't," Kira grumbled, but she kept walking. Scott was her best friend so if Scott wanted to go to a party someone from the lacrosse team had told him about then Kira would go with him. Didn't mean she couldn't grumble about it.

Scott stumbled a little in the dark, the paper bag with the wine he'd nicked from the kitchen swinging in his hand.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Kira asked. The street was dark and empty, houses on both sides with prim front lawns that looked empty for all intents and purposes. Sometimes there was the flickering light of a TV behind the curtains, but nothing that looked like a party.

"Yeah, sure, Danny told me about it," he grinned at Kira, slowing so they could walk next to each other.

"But it's not Danny's party." Kira didn't have to make it a question. She liked Danny and if it'd been his party he would've invited Kira, too. The other guys on the team? Yeah, not so much. Most of them just ignored Kira, which was fine as long as they acknowledged her on the field. Some others were more vocal in expressing their distaste and worst, they wouldn't even pass her the ball when she was free. Girl or not, she was one of the best players on the team.

"Come on, be a little bit excited, yeah?" Scott said, nudging her with his elbow.

"They probably don't even want me there," Kira tried not to make it sound as self-pitying as she felt. She didn't really mind if the other guys ignored her – it's not like they had such wonderful personalities that she wanted to be friends with them. She just wanted to play lacrosse, but being the only girl on the team made it hard.

"I want you there," Scott protested, slinging an arm around her shoulder. "And Danny does, he made sure to say you should come."

"Yeah, but it's not his party, is it?"

"C'mon," Scott pulled her close against his side. "Can you imagine anything better than their sour faces when we turn up and crash their party?"

"Yes," Kira said, poking Scott in the side so he yelped, twisting away from her. "You know I don't like parties. You always abandon me and I end up in the kitchen holding someone's hair while they puke in the sink. I'm no good with girls."

Scott had it easy at parties, with his charming grin and his warm eyes and his everything. He was just naturally likable. Kira was naturally awkward, stumbling over her words, especially around pretty girls.

"You just have to talk to them. It's not like they're aliens." As they turned the corner, any residual hope Kira had about not finding the party vanished. She could hear music, a low pumping like the heartbeat of a living thing, a house alive with music and people.

"See, told you we'd find it," Scott grinned, ringing the doorbell.

A guy opened the door. He was tall and muscular and wearing a tight shirt. He also looked really pissed, Kira didn't know at what. She hoped it wasn't at them. Because she'd never seen him before and clearly neither had Scott.

Scott smiled at him anyways, his roguishly handsome smile, and the guy's mouth twitched.

"Hey," Scott said. "Danny invited us?"

"No Danny here," the guy said, but he looked at Scott like he was a little sorry to say it.

"Well, I've got this," Scott held up the wine he'd brought. "Wouldn't want it to go to waste."

The guy looked from Scott to the bottle to Kira and finally he nodded.

"Okay, come on in," he said, stepping aside.

"Thanks. Oh, I'm Scott by the way."

"Derek," the guy said.

"Derek," Scott gave him an even brighter smile and this time Derek smiled back. "So, where should I put this?" He held up the bottle.

"I'll show you the way to the kitchen," Derek said. He turned around to lead the way.

Scott looked back at Kira and gave her a thumbs up. She was on her own.

She looked into the room where the music was playing. She didn't recognize the song. Girls were dancing slowly to the music and leaning up against the wall, faces hidden in their cups.

Kira's hands felt empty, hanging at her side and she longed for something to hold onto, so she went further into the house in search of the kitchen. When she got there, Scott and Derek were nowhere to be seen, but there were two girls leaning against the counter, heads bent together, talking in low voices. They didn't look like they wanted a third to join and Kira was too afraid to go up to them and find out.

She looked over the array of bottles on the table and finally poured herself a cup of coke. She didn't like the taste of beer and she didn't want to drink anything stronger, not when Scott was off somewhere else and she was alone in a house full of strange people.

She took her cup and left the kitchen, wandering around the house, glancing into rooms as she walked past. The house was bigger than she'd initially thought, with a maze of corridors and rooms.

In the winter garden a girl sat all alone on a metal bench.

"Hey, can I sit here?" Kira asked, pointing at the space next to the girl.

The girl looked up at Kira, not saying anything. She had pupils like a goat and Kira thought she must be wearing contact lenses, because her eyes glowed golden.

"Sit," the girl said. Kira felt awkward under her strange, heavy gaze.

After a moment the girl turned, looking out into the night once more. She had long hair that was so light it was almost white, or maybe it just looked that way in the moonlight. Kira would've called it curly, except it wasn't. It looked more sharp, everything about the girl looked sharp, almost like a zigzag.

It was almost quiet here in the winter garden at the back of the house. When Kira glanced back towards the door she saw Scott walking past, Derek's hand clasped in his. He caught Kira's eye and grinned. With his free hand he mimed a speaking mouth at her. Right. Talking.

"What's your name?" Kira tried. "I'm Kira."

"Reye's Erica," the girl said. "It means that I am part of the bevy of Reye and I will have to report back to her soon."

"Report back to her? About what?" Kira didn't really know what the girl was talking about, but she was pretty, like a knife or a mirror shard, even with her weird eyes.

"About my experiences here on the world. Do you like it here?"

"I mean, it's alright. I only just moved here, but Beacon Hills is a pretty small town."

"Yes. Small. Everything here is so small. But Reye says I must learn to be small before I can be grand."

Erica looked at her and smiled. Even her smile was sharp, curved like a sickle. She held one hand up for Kira to see.

"See." Her knuckles were sharp, protruding from her skin and her fingernails were filed to points. "I have learned to be sharp. Where I come from I cut knowledge into storms. Here, everything is soft, even storms." She seemed sad about that. "I stood in a storm when I was in Berlin, but the rain was water and it felt like soft fingers against my skin. Nothing like the glass shards it rains where I come from."

"Where do you come from?" Kira couldn't help but ask.

"From some place," Erica sighed. "Soon I will go back and carve everything I have seen into the thunder." She looked up at Kira. "How soft and small you are." Her hands which had dropped back into her lap came up to Kira's face, hovering just above her cheek. "May I kiss you?"

Kira was enchanted by the girl, Erica, who looked like she was cut out of stone. She wanted Erica to kiss her with her sharp mouth, feel Erica's sharp hand on her face.

"Yes," she said.

Erica cupped Kira's face in her hands very carefully and when she kissed her Kira could tell she tried to be careful, too, but even her teeth were sharp and Kira gasped into the kiss. Erica's mouth tasted like cinnamon, a sharp tang of heat on Kira's tongue.

"Thank you," Erica smiled when they pulled apart. "I will tell my sisters about your kiss, Kira. The clouds will echo of your softness." Her hand was still on Kira's cheek and Kira could just feel the tips of Erica's nails pressing into her skin.

"Uh, thanks?" Kira tried with a nervous smile. She didn't know quite what to say, but Erica seemed content with her response. She turned away again, staring out into the night.

"Hey, uh," Kira said after a moment of silence. "I'm gonna get a refill on this," she held up her empty cup. "Do you want anything?"

"Absinthe, please," Erica smiled. Kira wasn't sure they'd have absinthe there but she just nodded and smiled.

"I'll see what I can do." It took her a while to make her way back to the kitchen and although there were even more bottles standing on the table now, there was no absinthe. Kira poured herself another cup of coke. She decided to get Erica some of the wine Scott had brought. At least she knew what was in that bottle.

But when she came back to the winter garden it was empty, no sign of Erica anywhere. Kira shrugged to herself and kept going. She came to the living room, which was not the room where the music was coming from, but it was close to it. People were sitting on couches and all over the floor in small groups. Kira sat down in a free space on one of the couches, next to a girl with dark hair.

"Hello," the girl said. Her face looked pale and ashen under the low light. The skin under her eyes looked almost grey.

"Hey," Kira smiled. The girl looked lovely, even though she could probably use a good night's sleep. Her face was heart-shaped and she had dimples when she smiled.

"Do you want this?" Kira asked holding up the cup filled with wine. "I'm not gonna drink it anyways.

"Yes, thank you," the girl smiled. She took the cup in both hands like you might hold a cup of hot tea on a cold winter day, not a plastic cup of cheap wine at a party.

"Hey, you're shaking." Kira frowned at the girl's hands. Her fingers were a grayish purple colour and they were shaking slightly. Her whole body was shaking, now that Kira noticed it.

"Here, you can have my jacket," Kira said, shrugging out of her black hoodie. She draped it over the girl's shoulders. Then, because if you gave someone your jacket you should probably also introduce yourself, Kira thought, she said, "I'm Kira, by the way."

"Thank you, Kira. I'm Allison. But I'm not cold. See," she held up one shaking hand. It was cold to Kira's touch, so Allison was probably lying about that. "It's just my natural vibration."

That made Kira look up with a frown. "Vibration?"

"You have it, too," Allison smiled. Even her voice was shaking slightly. Her fingers closed around Kira's hand. "Only your vibration is much slower. 85 beats per one unit of time." Her fingers were on Kira's wrist now and Kira realized what Allison was talking about. Her pulse.

"You mean my heartbeat?"

"Yes," Allison smiled brilliantly. Her lips were slightly blue, as if she'd spent too long in cold water. "Yes, that is what you call it."

"My vibration is faster, so it is more noticeable. When I first came here," she leans towards Kira as if she's confessing an embarrassing secret. "I talked to the birds that hum. But my teacher-guardian explained that you were the intelligent species. So strange, since your vibration is so slow." She had leaned ever closer while speaking, and now her lips were by Kira's ear. Kira breathed in the smell of her hair. It smelled like gunpowder, but Kira of course, didn't know what gunpowder smelled like, so to her it just smelled like smoke and something else, unfamiliar.

"But I heard," Allison said, her cheek vibrating against Kira's, "that you can influence your vibrations." Her fingers were still on Kira's wrist and Kira was overtly aware of how fast her heart was beating. "Like that," Allison said. Kira could hear the smile in her voice.

"You know how else we can make our hearts beat faster?" Kira said, feeling daring. Allison leaned back, eyes wide and wondering.

"How?" she breathed.

"By kissing," Kira said. Her heart tripped and ran, Allison's fingers twitching on her wrist. It felt like taking a lie detector test, every little change laid open by Allison's cool touch. But she looked so amazed and wondrous that Kira didn't really mind.

"Kissing?"

"Yeah. We should kiss."

Allison's eyes were dark and intent, Kira couldn't even make out the difference between iris and pupil. Allison didn't blink as she came closer, looking right at Kira, and something in her gaze was so captivating that Kira couldn't look away, even when they were so close she couldn't focus on Allison's face without her eyes hurting.

Then Allison's lips were on hers, cool and vibrating, just like the rest of her. But her eyes were still open, searching for something in Kira's gaze, and her fingers were clasped on Kira's wrist over her pulse point.

Kira felt her heart rate ratchet up the longer they kissed and it made Allison smile against her lips to feel it.

"Delightful," Allison breathed when they pulled apart.

Kira saw movement out of the corner of her eye and, turning, she saw Scott in the hallway, waving at her to come over. She was reluctant to leave Allison, but Scott kept waving more intently. Derek was still with him, Kira noted, one arm slung around Scott's shoulders.

"Hey," Scott said when she'd made her way over. "I just found out that this isn't the party we wanted to go to. It's okay, Derek said we could stay, I just wanted to let you know, okay?"

"Yeah, alright," Kira said and watched as Derek pulled Scott upstairs.

She turned back towards the couch, but Allison was talking into what looked like a phone or some kind of handheld recording device. Her expression was intent and it seemed to Kira she was shaking harder than before. She didn't look like she wanted to be disturbed.

So, for lack of anything better to do, Kira made her way to the kitchen. At least it would be quieter there and she wouldn't have to feel so awkward for having no one to talk to. At home the kitchen was a place for her family to congregate, but at parties they seemed to turn into an oasis for the lonely people, the ones dragged along by their more adventurous friends.

The kitchen was empty and Kira leaned against the counter, draining the rest of her soda. As she was filling her cup once again there was a voice from behind her.

"What is that?" a curious voice asked and Kira turned around to see a girl reaching past her, taking one of the jello shots that were arranged on a tray, as if waiting for someone to come pick them and carry them around the house.

The girl poked at the jelly, a small frown on her face.

"It's a jello shot," Kira explained. "Here," she took one of the toothpicks from the tray and showed the girl how to run it around the inside of the cup, freeing the jelly. "And now you eat it."

"Eat it?" The girl looked up at Kira for the first time, a skeptical look on her face. Her eyes were large, the coloured part of them, leaving only a little triangle of white at each corner. There was a ring of brown and then a ring of green and inside that her pupils, blown wide.

She ate the jelly with a look of concentration on her face. "What a strange planet," she said. "Where you eat your beverages and drink your food." She shook her head. Her eyes found Kira's again and she seemed to remember that she wasn't alone. "Oh, hello. My name is Lydia." She reached out her hand for Kira to shake. It was small and there was some kind of red pattern on the back of it.

"Lydia, what a pretty name," Kira smiled. "I'm Kira."

"Kira," Lydia repeated for no apparent reason other to hear the sound of it. She had red hair that curled in tight ringlets around her head. Her face was littered in red dots like freckles and Kira looked down at her hands again. She couldn't see if the red markings continued up her arms because Lydia was wearing a long, flowy white dress, cuffed at her wrists. It had flowers embroidered on it with red thread, except they looked like no flowers Kira had ever seen.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Lydia asked, noticing Kira looking at her dress. "They tell our story."

"Your story?"

"The story of my home. Our pride and our dreams. All children learn the song of our story." Her face twisted into sadness. "Except now there's no one left to teach and no one left to learn. And all us children have headed out into the worlds to tell our story. Do you want to hear it?" Kira could tell this meant a lot to Lydia, her face lighting up from the inside, so Kira nodded. It earned her a brilliant smile.

"We fashioned it into the likes of a song," Lydia said, stepping closer. She took Kira's face in both hands and pressed their foreheads together. "I will sing it for you."

She started singing then, strange words like no language Kira had ever heard. Her voice rose and fell in time with the slow pulse of the strange music coming from the front of the house.

Lydia's eyes were closed and Kira closed hers as well. It felt like an intrusion to watch her as she sang. Because even though Kira didn't understand the words she understood the emotion. The story Lydia was telling was one of woe, of pain and desolation. She could hear loneliness in every aching syllable of it.

She felt something wet on her cheeks and when she opened her eyes she saw Lydia looking back, her big eyes full of tears. Lydia leaned forward then. It was almost not a kiss, just her lips brushing against Kira's as she sang her song into Kira's mouth. She could taste salt water and she didn't know if it was from Lydia's tears or something else.

When Lydia stopped singing it was like the world ended.

Gradually, Kira became aware of her surroundings, the low light in the kitchen, the forest of alcohol bottles on the table. There was a different song playing now, but it seemed muted, clumsy compared to the crystal clear beauty of Lydia's song that was still echoing in Kira's heart.

Kira tilted her head, kissing Lydia for real, trying to chase the taste of that song on her lips but she was already forgetting the words. Lydia kissed back for a moment before pulling back.

She smiled at Kira, her lips the color of carnations. "Thank you, Kira, for listening to our song."

"You're welcome," Kira was about to say when she heard Scott call her name.

"Kira! Finally, I've been looking for you all over. We have to go. My mom's gonna be home soon." He was standing in the doorway, one arm around Derek's waist. He didn't really look like he was about to leave.

She gave Lydia an apologetic smile and Lydia blinked at her with those strange, big eyes. She followed Scott and Derek down the hallway and to the front door.

"Wait here for a sec, okay?" Scott said. "I'm gonna say goodbye to Derek."

"Alright," Kira nodded. She went a little ways down the path because she didn't want to intrude on their moment and she also didn't want to stand there awkwardly while they made out. The front yard was mostly a landscape of shadows and deeper shadows, only lit by the light that seeped out through the living room curtains.

Scott came up behind her and when Kira looked towards the house the door was closed, no sign of Derek.

"So, did you meet anyone interesting?" Scott asked.

Kira hummed vaguely, lost in thoughts, her heart beating to the rhythm of a song she would never again manage to remember.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at twlesbians


End file.
